Oh By the Way...

I'm done with the grant!

The Smallest Things Can Make A Person Happy

I picked up the April issue of American Photo On Campus today in the lab at school. I didn't even bother to read the cover but one of the featured stories is called Plastic Factastic: Why cheap cameras can be so precious. A classmate of mine is currently using a Holga to shoot work for this course. Having used a Holga before (and loving it) and even writing about it earlier this quarter I would've totally opened up to that page and read immediately. But instead I just started flipping through the short magazine doing what I do best and just looking at the images. Then I saw this:

I recognized this image IMMEDIATELY and got super excited. This is the work of Jennifer Shaw
( Jennifershaw.net ) which I have loved since the first day I saw it. She shot with a Holga and created a series she calls Hurricane Story. She placed a magnifying glass over her Holga lens to create this familiar effect that carries on through all of the images. I immediately looked over at my classmate Hannah and said "Have you seen this!" She responded with "Yeah" looking at me like a crazy person because for some reason I assumed she would know who's work it was. She did not...I got way excited and told her to look at Jennifer Shaw's work and went on and on, pulled up her portfolio web site and all.

The reason I got so excited is when I participated in the Visual Narratives and Photographic Essay course one of the instructors introduced me to Jennifer Shaw and her son was my subject for one day while we were in New Orleans. So in seeing her work I made that personal connection remembering the day we spent at the park and I was super excited to talk about my experience. That class was such a different experience, at least once a week I think we bring up something about it or something that happened while we were there. Money well spent. :)

Assignment #2 15 Photos

Developing The Ability To Describe My Work

I'm going to take a stab at this. I definitely need a lot of assistance in this department! I don't even feel like I have a solid style to my work yet. Here goes to developing that over the rest of the year.

For class the instructor gave us a sheet with the following questions for us to answer about our work. I will try to answer them....

1.  Thoroughly describe the content of your work. This is not about intention or motivation - just the end product. What, specifically is in the photograph? Complete this exercise for one specific photograph. Then after you complete one photograph, describe a body of work or series of images - still just the description of what is in the work.

 This is an image of my little sister. She is in the bathroom looking at her up-do in the mirror. The focus is on the top of her head while the rest of the image remains out of focus. The image is fairly neutral with the exception of the blue shirt she is wearing and the blue light coming from the  hallway.

2.  What is the purpose or intention of the work? Are you trying to inform? Evaluate? Entertain? Sell? Illustrate?

       a. What are the components of the photograph(s) that you feel support this intention?

       b. Are there components of the process (planning, shooting, printing, etc.) that supports this intention?

3.  List 10 adjectives that describe your work.

4.  Imagine for a moment that you meet a prospective client in an elevator. This may be a gallery owner, an art director, a magazine editor, etc. You don't have your book with you and he or she wants to know what type of photography you do. In 1-2 sentences, how do you answer?

5. After receiving a business card from your contact in the elevator, you wish to follow up with an email and a link to your online portfolio. In 50 words, expand your elevator speech to further describe your work.

6.  Select a few samples of images you feel are representative of your 'style'.

       a.   Have a classmate describe these images  (take notes)

       b.   Have a friend or relative without a photography/media arts background describe them.

       c.   Have a stranger describe them.

       d.   What are the similarities and/or differences in their descriptions? Did you learn anything new?

              Was anything surprising?

7. In summary, in 1-2 sentences, describe your photographic style.

More Shots.

Here is a detail shot of the textures in Erinn's clothes that day. Hannah described Erinn's look as "Country Chic". I have both color and black and white. I think the black and white version abstracts the image even more than it already is.

Como Park Shoot

Yesterday I did a shoot with two friends who were kind enough to model for me. This is one image I've edited I decided to post both color and black and white because I really do like both of them.

Here they are:

Found A Blog

I found this blog today. It's one of the more recent ones I've found. In researching I found a lot that haven't been updated for months and this is pretty current. The cute thing is that it has the same little item that Gavin has in my previous post. The 'daddy pillow'.

I'm considering just emailing her and seeing if she's willing to talk to me.

http://offthebase.wordpress.com/2011/01/13/five-years-two-kids-and-four-deployments-later/

You HAVE To See This...!

So the whole thing that inspired this project was a military image I saw of a woman holding a baby in front of a laptop and on the laptop was her husband. They were skyping until the baby fell asleep. And the caption said something along the lines of "although my daddy is far away he's still here in my heart" because they got to see each other. I can't find the image but I am still looking.

Today I logged onto my Facebook and saw this picture. This is Gavin, his daddy is away on a 400 day deployment. He has a 1 year old brother and they miss their daddy soooo much. I love this image. This is exactly the types of things I want to photograph. I couldn't think of how to explain it before but it's coming along. I want to show the little things (and larger scale things) that these families do in times like this. In this case, just making a little pillow with the father's picture on it so Gavin can see him when he goes to sleep. It's such a small thing, but it helps this little guy.

* Just to verify again. This is not my image but an image my friend and Military Wife Kymber took of her son.

Researching Away!

I'm super excited I just ordered two books to continue my research on my project about Military Wives/Fiances/Girlfriends.

1. "Married to the Military: A Survival Guide for Military Wives, Girlfriends, and Women in Uniform"
Meredith Leyva

2. "CONFESSIONS OF A MILITARY WIFE"
Mollie Gross

Super excited to get these and start reading them. I have also tried to look for military spouse support groups in the area. I haven't found anything yet but I also have put the word out that I am looking. I started a group on facebook and added the few girls that I know that fit this project.

Done!

I finished my 2nd draft of my grant but it's a lot shorter than my first and rough draft. I feel like I should add something but I have no idea what to add. Hopefully today in class I can get some feedback. I cut out a lot of things to make it really seem feasible.

Also, since I don't have any new images of this specific project and found three from my essay project that I really like that I think emulate the style that I want to go for in the essay about military spouses etc.

Here they are:

Grant Re-write...

Finishing up my second draft of my grant and Becky was totally right, I am already sick of this! Just because I don't know what to write or how to write it...frustrating. I think I'm also just confused. I feel like I know what's going on but when it gets down to doing it I'm confused again. I don't even know if that makes sense. I'm not even sure what types of images to turn in because I haven't lined up any models yet. But I have been making contact and put up an event on facebook as an easy way to keep track of the people that I do make contact with. I do however want to continue this Military Wives/Girlfriends/Fiances project because I am really interested in it.